


Board by Boring Board

by Sinon1358



Series: Happily Ever After [1]
Category: Frozen (Disney Movies)
Genre: Arendelle was destroyed, Domestic, F/M, Feel-good, Fluff, Rebuilding, Ruler of Arendelle Anna (Disney), kind of, minor Elsa/Honeymaren
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:29:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22431883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sinon1358/pseuds/Sinon1358
Summary: A wedding, a coronation, and a complicated carpentry project. (AKA Arendelle was destroyed when Anna broke the dam, but she's learning to rebuild her kingdom, piece by piece.)
Relationships: Anna/Kristoff (Disney)
Series: Happily Ever After [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1614280
Kudos: 17





	1. An Necessary Destruction

**Author's Note:**

> I really felt like the ending of Frozen II was a bit of a cop-out, and I thought I'd like to see a little more into the workings of Anna's mind during the whole event. So instead of letting Arendelle be spared from the chaos, I destroyed it, to leave room for Anna to really flourish in her new title as Queen, and to give her a place to really bond with her new subjects.

Anna held her sister’s hand, too thankful that Elsa was safe to be upset that Arendelle had been swept under the waves. Olaf hugged her leg at her side, and Anna scooped him up into her arms for a moment before he wriggled around and she was forced to put him down before she could drop him. He chased after the little fire spirit, tripping over himself, and Anna couldn’t help but giggle.

Anna couldn’t help but notice Honeymaren trying to catch Elsa’s attention, and by the blush on her sister’s face, Anna was certain that Elsa had noticed too.

“You should go talk to her,” she said, elbowing Elsa in the side. “She sure seems to want to talk to you.” Anna raised an eyebrow at her sister, and that was enough to get her going.

Elsa ducked her head, but she smiled anyway, making her way over to where Honeymaren beckoned her. Kristoff stepped up next to Anna, and they stared together at where the sky met the sea, hand in hand.

Anna felt Kristoff's hand tug out of hers, and she turned to look at him, only to find him down on one knee, wind breezing through his hair and the golden glow of the sun surrounding him and reflecting in his eyes.

"Anna of Arendelle, I've loved you for as long as I've known you, and I'll love you for as long as I live. Will you do me the extraordinary honor of marrying me?"

He looked so hopeful, and beautiful, and Anna couldn't believe how lucky she was. Light glistened as it shone off of the ring, and she slid it on her finger without hesitation.

"Yes?" Kristoff asked, almost dazed.

"Yes!" she squealed, now bawling in earnest as she threw herself into his arms. 

After Hans, Anna had thought that maybe true love wasn’t for her, but Kristoff had proven her wrong time and time again. He was as close to her whole world as Anna could let him be. Honestly, if he hadn't asked her soon, she'd have proposed to him herself.

He pulled her in for a kiss, and even though she could feel her tears on his face, all he did was cup her cheek gently and wipe the tears as they fell. Anna only pulled away when she heard clapping from beside them. She looked over to see the general, her sister, and the rest of the newly freed people watching them, and she lit up like a Christmas tree.

Elsa pulled her into a hug, pulling her aside. The second Anna was pulled away, Kristoff was swarmed with congratulations from everyone, and Anna lost sight of him in the crowd.

Elsa tugged on her wrist, pulling her just beyond the tree line. "Come on. I want to talk to you about something."

Her voice sounded oddly mischievous, like she was planning something, and Anna wasn't sure how to feel about it yet. Elsa pulled her behind a tree and spun around to face her, beaming.

"Anna, you're always going to be my sister," she started.

"I know that."

"Have you ever thought about what it's like to rule a kingdom?"

Anna blinked. "Of course I have. But Arendelle is gone, remember?"

"Arendelle may be gone, but that doesn't mean you can't rebuild." Elsa's eyes twinkled.

"Wait, wait, wait—you said 'you,' not 'we.' Elsa?"

"I think I want to stay here. Start a new life." Elsa looked away from Anna pointedly, staring instead at the ground.

_ Is she not happy?  _ Anna wondered. Wait a minute—was that a blush on her sister's face? Anna felt her mouth stretch into a grin.

"Why do you want to stay here of all places?" Roles reversed, Anna made sure to let the teasing sleep into her tone so Elsa wouldn't take her too seriously.

"I think it will be good for me—and for all of us." Anna stared her in the eye until she blushed and looked away. "Also Honeymaren might have asked me to stay," she muttered.

Anna's eyes twinkled. "I knew it! So, when's the wedding?"

"Anna! We're just friends," Elsa scolded her, but it didn't hold any real bite.

(It was plain as day that Elsa wanted them to be so much more, but Anna wasn't going to call her on it.)

"But—" she paused as something occurred to her. "Who's going to rule Arendelle?"

* * *

Anna looked like a queen in her new coronation dress—and she felt the part, too. Honestly, the entire occasion felt very over-the-top, and they'd had to rush to build a place where the ceremony could be held, and that's all they'd managed to build so far. Everything was still piles of rubble, but Arendelle's people were safe, so Anna could live with that knowledge for now.

She walked through the cheering crowds with her head held high, bowing long enough for the crown to be placed on her head and then standing back up to wave to the people—her people, now—with her head held high. She couldn't help but think Elsa would be proud of her.

Her sister hadn't been able to make the ceremony, too busy helping in the Enchanted Forest, but Anna knew her sister had faith in her, and that was what really mattered. Besides. . .

As the crowd dissipated, everyone returning to their respective places, Anna wove through them searching the crowd for that familiar leather and blonde hair, but she just couldn't seem to spot him. So she looked for the reindeer instead, because surely there could only be one of them in the crowd (unless her fiance had adopted another one while she wasn't paying attention).

When she spotted Sven, she did a bit of a double-take. The tux he was sporting was certainly a bit of a different look for him, and Olaf was wearing one right next to him. Anna turned around and there was Kristoff, dressed up in a nice tux—probably the fanciest thing she'd ever seen him wear, not that that was saying a lot. Her heart melted a little bit.

"Did you boys get all dressed up for me?" She batted her eyes at Kristoff, and even though he schooled his expression into one of warning, she could still see the warmth and pride in his eyes.

He raised his finger towards her. "You get this for one hour."

Anna couldn't help but giggle. He was honestly so adorable she wasn't sure how to handle him but. . .

"It's okay," she replied, kissing him on the cheek. "I like you better in leather anyway."

It felt strange, but Kristoff's blush made it worth it.

Now, coronation over, Anna had a kingdom to rebuild.


	2. Arendelle Reconstructed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anna and Kristoff rebuild, and they finally get to be married, after all the blundering the poor boy did in the movie.

"No, no—oh, come on!" Anna stared at yet another nail in the wooden framework that refused to go in, instead bending and snapping like all the others before it. She stomped her foot petulantly before remembering that she was the queen, and maybe she should try to show a bit more composure. Luckily, everyone else appeared to be too engrossed in their own tasks to notice her. Like everyone else in Arendelle, Anna had spent the past few weeks working to fix the damage caused by the flood, and their efforts were really starting to pay off.

The town was functional again: shops were back open, and instead of quiet plaguing the town, the streets were bustling with life once more. Of course, the whole town was still working to rebuild, but that didn’t mean that they couldn’t resume their lives in the meantime as well. General Mattias, for example, was still working hard at his duties, but he now found most of his time occupied by Halima, taking photographs outdoors, walking her to and from her home during the day, and all sorts of other couple-things that made Anna giggle. It was nice to see her people getting along nicely.

Even Kristoff had gone back to work at least somewhat, although it had taken some serious convincing. He’d wanted to devote all of his time to helping Anna with reconstruction and the city’s planning, but Anna had shooed him away, albeit a little reluctantly. Kristoff was the kingdom’s only ice provider, and without ice to keep their food well-preserved, they wouldn’t last for very long as a kingdom.

Returning back to work didn’t mean that Anna and Kristoff never saw each other, however. Kristoff was constantly stopping by during the day to shower her with compliments and sometimes gifts of things like the flowers he found on his trek to the icelands that he thought would match Anna’s complexion. (Even when they didn’t, she still wore them, her heart beating faster and the blood rising in her cheeks.)

Her fiance was truly something special. When he would return home from work after perhaps a week away, Anna would always be surprised to find that he always waited up for her to return, even when he’d been away for so long and was so very clearly exhausted. And when Anna didn’t have time to talk to him like normal and to just be them , Kristoff would sit with her as she poured over the new requests from her people for new housing, for fixed roads, complaints of leaky roofs and supplies short in store, and he would offer her advice as well as he could, never once complaining, even though Anna could tell there were many things that he would rather be doing.

When times were truly difficult, and Anna and Kristoff and the entire town itself couldn’t figure out what to do, Anna would send a message with Gale to her sister, and although Elsa hadn’t come out of the forest to see them yet, she had never failed to send back a solution with haste, and although it left a bitter taste in Anna’s mouth ( Does she not care about them anymore? ), her sister had yet to let them down.

There were many projects underway in Arendelle, and everything had to be done as soon as possible. The bricks had to be relaid, each and every building rebuilt from the ground up, the ports reestablished, and so much more. Normally, if one or two of these things were to happen at a time, the work would still be overwhelming, but it would be at least somewhat manageable. Right now, however, there weren’t enough people who knew how to do the work available to even begin teaching everyone else, so they were sent to where they were needed the most or wherever they specialized in, then groups of people would take turns observing until they thought they understood well enough to do it themselves. It wasn’t exactly ideal training, but the experts were still making rounds to observe others’ work as well so that they would be notified early on if anything were amiss.

Even with the entire kingdom working as one to rebuild, it still took months—much longer than Anna had bargained for. With no real way of communicating with their neighboring kingdoms at the time, Arendelle had been unable to reach out for help, which led to their current predicament.

Anna had been trying her best to nail the same two boards together for the foundation of this building (she had already forgotten what it was to be—the blueprints were the part that mattered right now) for more than half an hour, and she was getting impatient, which was making it even harder to focus on the task at hand. Seeing all of the bent nails sticking out of the side, she sighed, flipped the hammer around, and began yanking them out one by one.

General Mattias passed by as she was struggling, and the amused look on his face only irritated her further.

“My Queen, may I speak freely?”

No, Anna thought crankily before correcting herself mentally. “Yes, General,” she said.

“If you continue to just try to slam nails into the same place in the board, and it continues to not work, wouldn’t you think it might be best to try something different?”

Anna huffed. “I don’t see what I’m doing wrong. It doesn’t make any sense that now I would suddenly be incapable of hammering a nail into a board. It worked with all the other ones.” She didn’t want to sound tired and petulant, but that was precisely how she felt, and judging by the look on General Mattias’s face, she hadn’t done a terribly good job of keeping it out of her tone.

He came over and pulled the board towards her, presumably for her to examine. “Tell me, my Queen, what do you see here?”

Anna didn’t really know what he meant. Sure, the wood looked a little bit different there than it did on the other boards, but most of this board looked like that, with dark splotches and raised bumps running through the wood. She looked up at him. “It’s a piece of wood.”

Mattias shook his head at her. “Yes, but other than that?”

“There are some bumps in it?” Anna threw her hands up in frustration. “It’s still wood though, right? Shouldn’t it work just the same?”

Mattias sighed, and Anna realized he probably didn’t need the stress of dealing with this right now. “Those ‘bumps,’ Your Majesty, are what is making the nails bend instead of going into the wood. A board with knots this bad is entirely unsuitable for building. If you use a different board instead, it should work just fine.”

Huh , Anna thought. She straightened her posture. “Thank you, General Mattias.”

He smiled back at her, as though sharing an inside joke with a friend. “Of course, Your Majesty.” He carried on his way, presumably to assist Halima in her daily activities as per usual.

Anna turned back to the board with new determination, tossing it aside and putting another in its place. Maybe this one would be easier.

* * *

The castle was the very last thing to be rebuilt, but it was worth it to Anna to have her people happy and safe once more. She and Kristoff, as odd as it was, had been taking shelter with General Mattias and Halima during construction so that they could focus their full attention on the people. Anna would have liked to say that her people were the only thing that mattered and that she was perfectly happy to spend her nights in a home other than her own, but with the exhaustion seeping into her bones and the pure elation she felt upon putting the final furnishings back into the castle told her that those statements could not possibly be entirely true.

Anna tried her best to keep most parts of the castle the same, but without the original blueprints, it was a little bit hard to stay on track. Instead of worrying about every little detail, however, Anna made adjustments as necessary, and if she didn’t like it, she would fix it herself. It was, after all, where she was going to be living for the rest of her life.

She was sure if it had been up to Elsa, she would have simply built whatever castle she fancied out of ice and called it a day, and had Anna called on her for help, Elsa would have built her anything she asked for, but Anna didn’t really fancy the idea of living somewhere so cold for the rest of her waking days.

Kristoff was as sweet as always, offering advice when she asked but otherwise just working with her and their plan to rebuild as needed. Goodness, it was going to be so nice to have their own space again. As generous and Mattias and Hamila were, she was certain they would be grateful to have Anna and Kristoff out of their living space as well.

After they had finally finished furbishing the castle enough that it was inhabitable again, Anna hadn’t even had the energy to tour the place, instead dropping directly into the bed, not even bothering to kick off her shoes. It could have been minutes or hours, Anna honestly wasn’t sure, but eventually, she felt the bed dip beside her. She turned her head to see Kristoff, hair still crazy from the wind and looking about as disheveled as he always did, climbing into bed next to her. The second he was settled in, she tucked herself up against him, even sneaking her cold feet between his calves, and he jumped a bit, but he didn’t move her, so it worked. 

Anna was ready to fall to sleep there and then, but Kristoff’s voice startled her for a moment. “I’ve been thinking about us, and about, you know, the whole getting married thing, and I know it’s been a while, and I hope you haven’t changed your mind but with everything going on I’d understand, and—”

Anna cut him off gently with a kiss. Normally, it would be right to let him speak his mind, but if there was anything Anna knew about her fiance it was that if she let him go on like this, he’d work himself into a panic before he even had a chance to get out whatever it was he’d wanted to ask her about in the first place.

She pulled back as gently as she’d leaned in. “Darling, what is it?”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, I know we haven’t gotten married yet because we needed to rebuild the kingdom, and get Arendelle back on its feet, but now that we’ve done that, I was just thinking. . .” He trailed off, looking a bit lost.

“That now would be a good time?” Anna made sure to add a note of teasing into her voice so he wouldn’t think she was put off by the notion. 

“Well, not right right now, of course, because it’s the middle of the night, and we’re both tired, but I was thinking—I was hoping that maybe we could be married soon?” It was a bit difficult to see, what with it being night and the lights all being out and all, but if Anna had to guess, she would say he probably looked even more nervous than he sounded.

Anna’s heart felt like it was going to explode from pure joy. “We can start planning the wedding in the morning. Do you think Sven could be your best man?”

* * *

The flowers were gorgeous, especially with everything in full bloom. They’d really lucked into the perfect time of year for an outdoor wedding. A little bit warm, but the gentle breeze ghosting through the pavilion was just right to keep them all cool. Still, even with everything in perfect order, Anna couldn’t help but feel a little bit nervous. After all, Elsa had said she’d be here for the first time since they had parted in the Enchanted Forest, and while Anna was elated she would get to see her sister again, she couldn’t help the nagging doubts swirling around in her head. What if Elsa didn’t show? What if Elsa didn’t approve of the way Anna had been running Arendelle? What if—

General Mattias appeared in her line of sight, and Anna forgot all about worrying. Mattias was about as close to a father as Anna had, and in light of this, she had asked him to be the one to walk her down the aisle. He agreed easily, and Anna could have sworn it lifted a very literal weight off of her chest.

She could hear the music from where she was hiding, and the trail of flower petals leading to the altar was beautiful but also a bit worrisome to Anna, who was a bit clumsy at even the best of times. How one could trip on a rose petal, she wasn’t entirely sure, but if anyone could manage it, Anna was certain it would be her. This dress, while absolutely stunning, was also rather uncomfortable, and Anna was afraid it might throw off her balance.

She felt a tug on her arm, and then they were walking, making their way through the archway, between the aisles, and to the altar. It was a little difficult for Anna not to immediately search the crowd for her sister, but she reminded herself that she would see her sister after the vows.

Sven stood right next to Kristoff, who was looking handsome as ever, if a bit uncomfortable. She knew the tuxedo was going to be a bit much for him, but he’d insisted on wearing it, saying that he had to look good for his bride on the big day. Goodness, what would she do without them?

The ceremony passed in a flash, and all Anna could recall was slipping the rings onto her and Kristoff’s fingers and saying, “I do,” before being swept into a kiss, uncertain if the ringing in her ears was all in her head or from the crowd’s cheering.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't sure that this would be the right place to end it, but I figured it was better than not writing it at all. I might come back to make edits later.


End file.
